Chitra's newest book of stories is titled The Unknown Errors Of Our Lives. In this poignant collection, featuring tales set in India and America, Divakaruni illuminates the transformations of personal landscapes, real and imagined, brought about by the choices men and women make at every stage of their lives.
“The Lives of Strangers” a story from this collection, about a young woman who goes back to India for the first time and her experiences there won the coveted O’Henry prize and also the Pushcart Prize.
“The Love Of A Good Man," is a tale of a happily married Indian woman who must confront her past when her long-estranged father begs to meet his only grandson. "Mrs. Dutta Writes A Letter," (selected for Best American Short Stories, 1999), is about an old woman who comes to live with her children. This widow living in her son's Calfornia home discovers that her old world ways are an embarrassment to her daughter-in-law.
"The Blooming Season For Cacti," where two women, uprooted from their native land by violence and deception, find unexpected solace in each other; and the title story where an artist is faced with her fiance's past a week before her wedding must make an important decision. In the title story a painter looks to ancient myth and the example of her grandmother for help in navigating her first real crisis of faith. The last story in the collection is based on Gurap, Divakaruni’s village in Bengal, where her mother has now settled. All in all, Divakaruni picks up on current social themes, and themes that are familiar to many immigrants to weave them into a beautiful stories. Knowing, compassionate and brilliantly rendered each of these nine tales speaks to the longing that haunts the displaced everywhere.
Unknown Errors Of Our Lives
Anchor Books Trade Paperback
Publication Date: January 2002
ISBN: 0-385-49728-8
Price: $13.00
Reviewed by Visi Tilak
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